This is why big countries suck. They are slow to change and a wrong move is horribly damaging. Look at the US or China, no matter how I or all my countrymen live in Sweden it won't really matter if climate change deniers get in charge in the US for example.
I just think it's so sad to see everything go to shit due to some greedy assholes that won't invest in solutions that are effective AND sustainable.
I plan to become a climate change prepper in the future because shit will hit the fan sooner or later.
EDIT: I'm not ready to call climate change solved yet, but at the deployment trajectory China is on, the rest of the world will have no choice but to follow, as China is pushing renewable generation costs very low (which undercuts nuclear and fossil fuels, pushing their prices higher making renewables even more competitive). Solar and wind are both below 3 cents/kWh unsubsidized, with wind expected to fall another 15% in the next 2-3 years, and solar another 25% in the same time period.
And as we all know, if there's any nation whose official economic statistics are completely trustworthy, it's China. Why, even if China's famously open and transparent government did feel the urge to mess with the statistics, their dynamic free press, unfettered by government controls, would be all over it.
I don't think you can just gaze at a dam from the visitors' center and accurately deduce how much renewable energy is being produced by hydroelectric power across one of the largest countries in the world. Why, even buying a souvenir T-shirt in the gift shop might not be enough to gain that information.
That doesn't make any sense. If the US were split into the 50 states, you would have to get 50 governments separately to agree to carbon regulations, instead of one. Same with China or with any other large country.
Also, a large country is likely to have regions that will lose big in case of global warming, while other regions are indifferent or even stand to gain. The large country's single government has reason to oppose global warming in that case, which means that it can put all of its diplomatic weight on the side of global warming countermeasures. And once countermeasures were agreed to, they can be enforced across the entire country. If it were split up into smaller countries, the ones that will be less affected by global warming have an incentive to avoid countermeasures so they can exploit their competitive advantage there.
The Bible gives no good reason to deny climate change. The leaders of the two largest Christian groups, the Catholic Popes (specifically Benedict XVI and Francis) and the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, have long been supporters of green policies.
And actually, as it describes humans as the stewards of God's creation, green policies should be essential to their acts as Christians.
However, in the US, specifically in the South since that's my experience, many actively deny climate change and refuse to pursue green policies, ostensibly on religious grounds though when discussing it with them it either makes no sense or they can't establish any. It's very frustrating. They see climate change and green policies as some sort of atheist, pinko, commie conspiracy.
A good example is Jim Inhofe, the Republican chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. According to him, the Bible tells us that GCC is impossible because the atmosphere is under the control of God, and God would never allow anything harmful to humans like that to happen.
Technically true, except those who claim to stick to a literal interpretation of the book are much more likely to perform a selective reading of it, keep what they like, discard what they don't. Ends up being just another bullshit name.
50 states wouldn't have the global power to keep oil on top for so long. We wouldn't be in this mess w/o the combined power and control and capture of the US government.
I think big countries should be made to pay the smaller ones affected by climate change.
We weren't the ones that caused it but will be made to suffer the most because of it(rising tides, effects on the ocean which we depend on for our food source, lack of rainfall).
We are very much seeing the effects already!
Opposition to large states certainly makes sense if you are concerned about climate change, but perhaps not for the reason you think. Large centralized governments and economies cause wasteful and short sighted resource consumption (and thus CO2 production) through massive debt bubbles on a scale never before seen.
It would be stupid to crash our economy and then find out that the "solutions" didn't work. Or that we come up with technological fix to the problem. Or that that whole thing was just a ploy by leftists to seize power.
Anyhow, if you expect 7 billion people to do anything in regards to climate change, don't hold your breath.
> Anyhow, if you expect 7 billion people to do anything in regards to climate change, don't hold your breath.
Except that China is halting construction on 20+ coal plants. And deploying renewables faster than any other country. And putting in place heavy subsidies for electric vehicles. Chinese citizens overwhelmingly support renewables and the cost associated with it:
Americans? One presidential candidate wants more fracking, the other one thinks China invented climate change, and everyone else is oblivious in their SUV on their way to Starbucks.
One might argue its easier for China to evolve to a non-carbon economy because their citizens haven't tasted the decadence Americans have of a carbon-intensive lifestyle; regardless, China is going above and beyond what the US has ever considered for climate change policy, and drag us Americans along for the ride. Thanks China?
China are also in the situation where their depedence on coal and their poor current record in cleaning up industrial output makes the negative effects of the status quo much more noticeable.
When the West reached that stage, renewable power was less of a consideration and option, and so we opted for emissions standards and similar than brought the noticeable effects down to tolerable levels, and we are paying for it now in weaker support for putting in place a proper fix.
Fracking has actually been beneficial in reducing climate change because the carbon footprint of natural gas is far lower than coal. Most O&G companies are currently pushing for a carbon tax.
On the right hand side of that chart, it says he gets his data from both reconstructions and modern temperature measurements. How on earth are you supposed to compare those two? This is essentially just another hockey-stick graph.
Usually I like xkcd, but that one is wrong at the end. The data actually matches the "best case scenario" surprisingly well. I was really amazed at how that model has performed when I first saw it, it is really interesting.
https://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/gwpf_nasa-hansen_...
Yeah, for the small countries that have no influence whatsoever. Sweden once also was a great country (I doubt you would have complained back then) but it overextended in its wars and got basically castrated by the Russian Empire.
I believe you have other problems in Sweden right now after your men allowed your country to be invaded.
Coastal cities are unlikely to be flooded in our lifetimes. We're looking at about 1m [1] sea level rise in 100 years, or 50cm in our lifetime. That means coastal cities will face more severe storms, not ending up submerged. [2]
"Pfeffer adds estimates of sea level rise due to thermal expansion and ice melting to calving approximations and concludes that SLR by the end of the century will range 0.8 to 2.0 m above present with an emphasis on the lower area of this range (Figure 7)."
> Coastal cities are unlikely to be flooded in our lifetimes. We're looking at about 1m [1] sea level rise in 100 years, or 50cm in our lifetime.
Thats true, but what most people don't know is that sea level rise don't necessarily mean catastrophic floods. A far bigger problem -- in our lifetime -- is aquifer salination, that is the intrusion of saltwater into coastal freshwater aquifers. This is already happening, in the Nile-valley, Benin and Cyprus but also in Louisiana and California.
When the salinity of coastal Freshwater aquifers reaches a critical level, growing crops in coastal areas can be all but impossible.
"That means coastal cities will face more severe storms, not ending up submerged. [2]"
How does that work? Coastal cities will have more than half a meter more water to deal with and additionally have to face larger more powerful storm surges on top of those 50cm. Don't forget at certain times of the year we see stronger tides.
I also wonder if in 2007, the IPCC were more optimistic about our ability to curb emissions and took into account some of the feedback looks which are kicking in?
Isn't Miami already having problems with flooding at high tide? It doesn't seem like it would take that big of a change from them to have flooding problems when it isn't high tide.
Moreover, Miami is built on porous limestone; sinkholes are everywhere (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/03/18/notes-from-unde...) and will grow whenever salt water pours in, so Miami sinks. They don't even need rising sea levels to make things worse there.
I wouldn't mess with real estate speculation. The best route would be to look into ways to profit from protracted regional conflicts, massive (forced) dislocations of whole populations, famine, despair and hopelessness, generally.
Because those are slated to be (and according to some measures, already are in certain areas) the primary impacts of climate change, for the geographically unlucky.
I am wondering if by the time we wake up it's too late for renewable energy. Given that the methane is literally exploding out of the ground in Siberia it already might be too late. I am afraid it might be a likely scenario that the hod outs especially in the US will go from denial to resignation.
Why are you afraid of the hod outs going from denial to resignation? At least if they are experiencing resignation they will be willing to admit there is a problem and do something about it (admittedly, it will be too late, but...)
I agree that renewables are going to be huge but I don't know what companies are going to get rich off of it. What will allow individual companies to build good profit margins? The biggest PV efficiency boost being implemented in the mainstream right now (passivated emitter cell structure) was invented in Australia in the 1980s but the patents expired before it was implemented on a large scale. Core patents for heterojunction cells (another approach to high efficiency on silicon) recently expired too so unrestricted competition can reign there also. The barriers to entry in PV manufacturing are pretty low and look likely to stay that way.
Is wealth going to be made on installing rather than manufacturing hardware? It's also hard to see how e.g. SolarCity protects its margins from competition with other installers. Customer acquisition is a big chunk of costs right now, but if SolarCity spends a bunch on ads to get Americans thinking about rooftop solar that helps competing installers too. Look at the Australian market for a glimpse at the future (much lower installation costs, much higher penetration, broad consumer awareness without further advertising).
EDIT: my own best guess is that if there's going to be a breakout company that achieves high margins on cleantech it's going to be in the area of storage. That's because a patented approach that can seriously lower storage costs or increase cycle life (which amounts to practically the same thing for stationary storage) is an advantage that can't be immediately cloned. OTOH I do not expect protected margins for companies that are lowering costs by scaling, e.g. Tesla's battery gigafactory. Historical reminder: at the beginning of the 2000s China had no solar PV industry to speak of. In less than a decade Chinese manufacturers went to dominating the market because IP barriers were minimal and they could scale larger very quickly once there was a state commitment.
You can get insanely rich by betting on a trend and executing competently. Not "Forbes profile piece" rich, but definitely "never worry about money and pass that down a generation or two" rich.
I think the question you're asking is "how does a millionaire/billionaire multiply their net worth in a decade or two", while that question I'm answering is "how do I go from salary slave to capitalist class in a decade or two"
Renewables are already huge. Once batteries get a bit better and solar gets a bit cheaper, things will really get going. The deployment won't wait for the world to wake up about global warming.
"Last year marked a turning point for renewables. Led by wind and solar, renewables represented more than half the new power capacity around the world, reaching a record 153 Gigawatt (GW), 15% more than the previous year. Most of these gains were driven by record-level wind additions of 66 GW and solar PV additions of 49 GW."
There is the option of running a charity, one that would be ready to help at the right places by reurbanisng and reorganising territories. If you benefit from the charity (=if it gives you credit for politics or if you get a salary for the full-time job), then you're profiting.
Be a consultant in XXIth century urbanization, be it to save energy, reduce pollution or to prepare for the worst. Once we get +2 degrees, countries might understand why +6 degrees might be harmful and massively subscribe to your services.
Or start a weapon industry. See that Daesh thing? That's what happens when there's a slight draught every summer.
Start a boat people company. They'll be in very much demand in 20 years.
You'll object that you have much more money than that and you're not aiming for a mere salary. Well, you'll be happy to have the skill everyone needs when the rest of the world is fighting for survival. Just imagine what if the world votes on a complete ban on petrol and puts the world on an energy diet. Which is the only thing we must do.
Given all of these market mechanisms & broad consensus about GW effects amongst a certain wealthy & market-moving slice of the population (coastal landowners) it is extremely odd that they continue to, eg, pump money into Miami real estate. And AFAICT there is no macro-hypothesis global warming hedge fund with any significant level of assets, so hey, money on the table.
Their revealed belief would seem to be that the effects will be mitigated one way or another.
I don't think it would be the rising sea levels. It is the continent sized areas around the poles filled with previously inaccessible resources. So look at eg polar mining, drilling, shipping.
Investing in coastal construction, maintenance and emergency recovery seem fine ideas, as well as things like portable energy and long-distance shipping.
Blockchain and AI. Pack your consciousness into undeletable network of computers distributed in outer space and go take a break on Mars.
My grandgrandsons will do ok by flintknapping, the usual means of exchange will be booze. There will be plenty of water for it.
That depends on what companies you want to short and your broker. I've shorted plenty where I just had to enter a few numbers and press a button...
There's also any number of companies that let you do the equivalent via CFD's (Contract For Difference). Be warned: Many of them allow crazy levels of leverage that can wipe you out with tiny little swings.
You're right it's not a given that you'll be able to "just" short whichever share you want, but it's hardly difficult to find a way of betting against a given company.
Wait for a couple of years of heavy flooding/storm activity, buy distressed beachfront property at a discount, and flip it when you have a few years with no flooding.
Find the people who are claiming that the sea levels will rise and destroy our cities, and attempting to sell you things based on that. Buy stock in their company.
I'm not saying I want to make climate change worse or lobby for it out anything. Unfortunately climate change is happening and there are indicators that we already crossed the line to runaway climate change (methane coming out of the permafrost). Why should I not try to make a profit from this fact as long as I don't make it worse? How is this different than running a funeral home?
I don't see anything even slightly objectionable, unless ajmurmann were throwing around billions and helping regulate to ensure continuing rising sea levels. This poster is obviously viewing it as an inevitable externality and asking how they can invest profitably. They mention investing in higher land - but since coastal properties will literally disappear underwater, there could be other ways to profit. Additionally, solar power (which might be heavily subsidized), electric cars, even something insane like fusion-powered electric airplanes (a pipe dream, it's ridiculous) would all be reasonable answers. I mention the airplane thing as jetliners are a leading cause of Co2 emissions which is thougth responsible for this rising sea level. -- as literally trillions of dollars in seaside property become uninhabitable due to flooding (literally trillions, this is not an exaggeration) society might decide to instead spend $10,000,000,000,000 (that's $10 trillion) to halt it today. It's reasonable for OP to ask how given that society will be feeling a push to spend $10,000,000,000,000 - how he/she can be better off with this analysis done today.
Zero objection and there is no moral component whatsoever to their question.
EDIT:
I'd like someone to explain the downvoting behavior (of my comment). As multiple of my examples show, the investment can be in alternative energy, for example, when obscene expanses of valuable coastland are being flooded and people are simply 'forced' to act. I don't understand why the question or my defense of it were downvoted.
Won't a lot of this coastal flood protection infrastructure just add emissions to the atmosphere, thus grossly exacerbating the problem? Seems like way to little, way to late.
Trying to just "build a wall" around cities just doesn't sound like it's going to work, I even saw designs where buildings in Manhattan will have to be built on stilts, but how much environmental environmental damage will all this new construction do?
Probably best off to just start relocating these cities and find new homes for the inhabitants.
This combined with other issues like fracking, leaking methane into the atmosphere aren't exactly filling me with confidence.
I'm going to say you're underestimating the affects of climate change if you think a one meter rise in sea level globally isn't a big deal. Not to mention a selfish point of view, considering some peoples homes are already being inundated and the catastrophic effects it will have on coral reef systems.
Burying bamboo or other biomass is not a particularly reliable or effective form of carbon sequestration. (Anywhere you bury it, it will decompose and most of the C02 removed from the atmosphere will wind up as CH4 + CO2.)
Carbon sequestration is a very active area of research, but for the most part, you're looking at injecting liquid C02 or water with a very large amount of dissolved C02 into deep reservoirs. Ideally, you want to inject it into a rock that will react with it to precipitate carbonate minerals over time, instead of dissolving what's already there.
At any rate, large-scale carbon sequestration is an interesting but difficult problem. It's been done successfully on small scales, but how do you do it on a global, carbon-neutral scale? It's surprisingly tough to figure out, and we're not putting anywhere enough focus on it. It's certainly better funded than a lot of things, but it needs more research and more funding.
Only for a year or a few years. Biomass doesn't really sequester that much carbon on a long-term scale.
You need to move CO2 from the atmosphere into the geosphere. Biomass can do that (e.g. hydrocarbons), but it's inefficient (a lot of it goes back to the atmosphere) and slow. Carbonate precipitation is much more permanent, and it's something we can force to happen at a high rate.
It has been a while but I thought that algae grown in raceway farms was the most efficient way to remove carbon? Love to read more on the bamboo side of it if you have links.
Yes, I've come to the same conclusion. After growing bamboo, it was my first idea, too, but algae is unbeatable for rate of growth. Here in Florida, we could grow millions of metric tons easily. The food could be food waste and sewage.
The plans I remember reading about (5 or so years ago) were about building large scale raceway ponds out in AZ, NM and that area as you had the ideal sun, cheap land, and it could be dried naturally further reducing energy consumption. I've also read a bit about them trying to use it for animal feed but I never could get the full story on that.
Before you bury it, convert it to biochar. This keeps it from rotting into methane and escaping and improves the soil requiring less water and fertilizer to grow crops.
I wonder if the carbon released by digging holes and cutting down the bamboo is greater than the carbon sequestered this way? At any rate I'd suggest not bothering to bury the bamboo, you can just pile it up somewhere.
Well, we have all sorts of schemes proposed to partly burn biomass and bury or spread the resulting charcoal. Surely raw green bamboo would hold more carbon.
Yeah, you'd have to bury it deep enough to prevent decomposition within a few hundred years. Holes that big are hard to do without heavy machinery which guzzle fossil fuels.
It's easy enough to secure big rocks to bamboo, but the same problem arises, how do you get tons and tons of bamboo and any required ballast out to deep water positions? Cargo ships! Which are some of the worst polluters on earth.
What a depressing, predictable series of events. Just wait until people start connecting the dots between climate change and global instability. I predict useless hysteria.
To save the click: "West Antarctica, or Lesser Antarctica, one of the two major regions of Antarctica, is the part of that continent that lies within the Western Hemisphere, and includes the Antarctic Peninsula. It is separated from East Antarctica by the Transantarctic Mountains and is covered by the West Antarctic Ice Sheet."
I've never heard of Northern Antarctica. The questions was about West Antarctica, which makes total sense since the globe is laterally made up of a western and eastern hemisphere. But since Antarctica is in the southern hemisphere, talking about Northern Antarctica doesn't make much sense other than talking about any point away from the south pole. Maybe you are confused by the concept of a hemisphere?
There is an infinity of coordinate systems that can be used to describe a roughly axisymmetric rotating body like the Earth (or practically any body in gravitational hydrostatic equilibrium). There are several in widespread use for this planet, some of which are detailed at and below https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Geographic_coordinate_system#/Ca...
When using systems of coordinates that require an arbitrary choice of origin point, one generally has to simply state what the choice is.
For the system of coordinates being discussed in this thread, the origin point is defined as the prime meridian, and it forms half of one of an infinite number of geodesics that bisect Antarctica. But because that particular geodesic is elevated to a special status by an arbitrary choice in the setting of the system of coordinates, when using that system of coordinates, it is perfectly reasonable -- under the conventions of that system -- to discuss masses that would be on one half or the other of the planet if it were divided into two parts through that geodesic.
But nobody seriously argues that the geodesic is in any way special physically compared to the infinity of others passing through the same two points (near the mean rotational poles); the Prime Meridian is a convention, and so an eastern and western hemisphere each bounded by a plane perpendicular to the meridian extended to a great circle.
Moreover, there is nothing special about this particular system of coordinates on the Earth, and the Prime Meridian does not really even have much local meaning more than a few metres away from the Greenwich Observatory, which is firmly set in what locals universally call "East London" or even "South-East London".
So, "Western Antarctica" is simply absorbing a particular choice of coordinate system on the Earth, which in turn has a defined origin point for one axis that was chosen arbitrarily. The label "Western Antarctica" is not invariant under a change of coordinates (whether by changing where there Prime Meridian is by an angle that (in radians) is not an integer factor of \pi, or by changing to a wholly different set of coordinates that use different axes altogether), and so isn't a physical feature of Antarctica, but then there's nothing physical -- in the sense of invariant under change of coordinates -- about the U.S. midwest, or Western Australia either.
However, conventional sets of coordinates on any physical system make descriptions of coordinate-invariant features easy for people who accept the convention, and understand its features and limits. (For instance, the lat-long-alt system is not very useful very close to the coordinate singularity; but that singularity vanishes under change of coordinates, and it is only a deliberate choice in matching the coordinate singularity to a point near the (approximate) line of (approximate) axisymmetry that leads to confusion like the one that appears to be gripping you when dealing with features near the coordinate singularities.)
I'm tired of the "climate change is settled science" bit, okay--for centuries, people believed the sun revolved around the earth and nobody was allowed to question that.
The answer to speech you don't like is more speech, not censorship. And I'm with the poster who talked about "bullshitting" because climate change has a lot of the smells of that very thing.
Does it though? Your example about the sun and the earth is a false equivalency. In fact, you illustrate it yourself: "people believed". There was no (or very little) science involved in forming their conclusions; conclusions which science has now shown to be wrong.
Ironically, in doing so, you've highlighted a great example to show why we use the scientific method and how well it works - thereby weakening your own position that the science is not settled. And to that end, I think you should take 15 minutes and read this essay by Isaav Asimov:
So when you say that climate change isn't settled science, my response is that you may be a little right: there are those who may overstate the science in order to push their own agenda. But you are, without a doubt, very wrong.
Mmm, so we should go off how the science "smells" vs what it says?
Also, for everyone who suggests that belief in the reality of climate change is politically motivated - what is the actual motivation? Sure plenty stand to profit from the sustainable energy industry, but if it was all a hoax in the first place, why would so many be pushing to go the hard way? Why not just throw in with traditional energy industries? Obviously the answer is that only one side in this "debate" is primarily politically motivated, and it's the side that stands to lose a lot of easy money, not the side that stands to make some lesser amount of hard money.
Well, it turned out that, when the planet moves around the sun, their apparent motion as seen from Earth still closely matches the prediction of the latest geocentric models. So, geocentrists were wrong, but not "Oh no tomorrow Mars will totally reverse course and we'll never understand why" wrong.
So, if you're betting on another Galileo moment, you're wrong. You're wrong now, and even in the unlikely case of a Copernican climate science revolution, you will remain wrong. Nature has this nasty habit of being consistent.
1. This is one measurement among many. The honest scientist considers the whole of the data, rather than cherry picking the 1 among N measurements that support his hypothesis.
2. Existence of conflicting evidence is a good reason for more, not less, research.
3. There's nothing to suggest that one set of measurements reflects a trend. The global system is complex, and the existence of surprising phenomena should be a reason to try to understand better, not an excuse to bury our heads.
4. The relationship between stability and total mass is probably not strictly positive and is certainly not linear. So even in the best case scenario, the risk of destabilization should still be studies.
Thanks for this. The comment you're replying to gave a link to one study of a complex phenomenon, that partially conflicts other studies. As you point out, there's not total consensus on what's happening. But the comment's suggestion that this one study settles the question of Antarctic mass loss is wrong.
The linked study (Zwally et al.) uses satellite radar altimetry (ICESat) to measure height of Antarctic ice, and thereby quantify mass losses. Other studies use satellite-derived gravity (GRACE) to get more directly at mass changes. They conflict.
One possible reason (among several) for the discrepancy is that the overall height of Antarctica is also changing as it rebounds from ice loss in the distant past, i.e., some of the height increase seen by Zwally et al. is due not to ice increases, but to inter-ice-age rebound of the continent beneath the ice.
Bloomberg rarely does proper math. Melt both polar caps and the ice of Greenland, and you barely get global sea level rise by very few inches. Antarctics as a whole is 90% of the world land-based ice. 29 mln cubic km. All of the floating ice is around 3 mln cubic km. It may look that it can cause 60m high sea level rise, but most of this will be evaporated into milder global climate and stronger rivers. We shall have larger Caspian Sea, larger Aral Sea, perhaps green Sakhara, and perhaps come catastrophic rains in the temperate zone. Picture is very distant and very different from global warming speculations anyway. The Earth seen past with no polar caps, it also seen ice ages, these will inevitably happen again.
You're forgetting thermal expansion (And it takes decades for increases in atmospheric temperatures to cause a likewise increase in water temperatures.)
I disagree with your comment, the massive ocean gyres and global weather patterns will be severely impacted, with results that are totally unpredictable, including a drastic mix of ecosystems and acidification of the oceans.
On top of this... for the love of all that is holy, basic english would be "*HAS seen".
No prob, we'll see. I shall put English Grammar to my testament, to enable our grandgrandchildren decide who was right. I doubt, however that this grammatical norm will survive the next global glacial event.
I just think it's so sad to see everything go to shit due to some greedy assholes that won't invest in solutions that are effective AND sustainable.
I plan to become a climate change prepper in the future because shit will hit the fan sooner or later.